PocketBible 2.0.6 Available on the App Store

We’ve just been notified that our latest update to PocketBible (version 2.0.6) has been approved by Apple. It should become available in the App Store over the next 24 hours.

We apologize for the delay getting our iOS6-compatibility fixes into PocketBible. We ran into a couple of issues getting our update past the Apple approval process. In the end, being forced to address those issues caused us to find a couple tricky bugs that wouldn’t have turned up otherwise. But the whole process ended up taking longer than we wanted.

The complete list of new features and bug fixes is below, but a couple are worth highlighting. First, this version adds support for the Greek New Testament. You should find the SBL Greek New Testament in your list of downloadable books in “Add/Remove Books”. There are instructions in the built-in Help for enabling the Greek keyboard so that you can do searches in Greek.

Several bugs introduced in iOS 6 have been circumvented. In particular, you may have noticed PocketBible would only read the first verse on the screen to you when you asked it to start reading. This has been fixed. And it’s not really a bug, but PocketBible will now take advantage of the full height of the screen on the iPhone 5. (This wouldn’t have been a problem except that Apple “lies” to our app when we request the size of the iPhone 5 screen, apparently to maintain compatibility with apps that aren’t as clever as PocketBible by making them think they’re running on an older device.)

I believe we’ve finally fixed the problem of books and voices disappearing when memory runs low. Apple changed the way they do this a couple of times over the last year or so and kept defeating our efforts to preserve our files. We think we have it figured out now.

Finally, PocketBible now requires at least iOS 5. The latest version of the development tools only produces ARMv7 binaries and there are no ARMv7 devices that don’t support iOS 5. We’d like to support older versions of the operating system, but we’re limited by what the development tools support.

14 Responses

Is there any chance of including automatic syncing of highlights, bookmarks and devotional progress in future. It would be great to keep my iPhone and iPad in sync more easily.

Is there also any way to mark the end of a daily reading. I usually forget where I am supposed to be finishing and have to keep checking back. I originally used the Palm version which only showed the versus for the reading, is there a way of doing something similar in the iOS version.

Sorry if these come across as moans, they are not meant to be. I think PocketBible is a great product, but these are just a couple of things that would help me and hopefully others too.

We’re investigating a more automatic synchronization scheme for our Android product. If it works there, we’ll migrate it to our other platforms. This may not happen right away, but I just wanted to let you know it’s one of the things at the top of our list.

You’re right that [UIScreen mainScreen].bounds.size.height returns the correct height. The problem is that the program’s window, which used to be sized to the height of the screen (i.e. [UIScreen mainScreen].bounds.size.height) is now given a fake height by the OS so that programs that hard-code their layouts based on known screen dimensions (horrible, horrible practice) don’t completely blow up. Instead they get a small screen floating in a bigger screen not unlike the iPhone emulator on the iPad. On the other hand, programs like ours that are completely independent of screen dimensions (as a result of good, common-sense coding practices) will look bad until we add code to work around this “lie” (i.e. we set our window height to [UIScreen mainScreen].bounds.size.height).

Craig,
Until now, I’ve never left a comment on a blog. But, I wanted to tell you how much I enjoy and appreciate this program/app by Laridian. I’ve used the Windows, Blackberry, and now the Apple versions of PocketBible. And, with the exception of the Blackberry version, which would never work on my particular phone, I have used PocketBible since I bought my old Dell Axium many, many moons ago. Your customer service has always been top-notch and the quality of your programs is 1st-rate. My one request is still the one I’ve been badgering you about recently and that is to release the Serendipity Bible for Group Study as one of your Bible offerings.

My men’s Bible study group uses that Bible and it would be real nice if we (we have multiple iPad users in the group) had the capability to cross reference the Serendipity Bible with some of the other resources you offer within your app. Keep up the fine work! Kevin

Have you ever considered a notepAd on one of the split windows. It would be nice to not have to leave the program to take notes in church. Just a thought…truly appreciate your work and love pocket bible

Long time user, from way back in the Palm days and have it on my Samsung Galaxy SII. Finally took the plunge and have the iPad now. Loving it so far. Quick question – will the RVR95 (Spanish) be coming to the iPad soon, as it is on the Android? That would make my life complete! (Well not really, but it would help a lot!)

Sorry for the delay responding to your question about the RVR95. Yes, the RVR95 will be available for iOS sometime soon. There was a problem with it that had to be resolved by modifying each of our readers. Since Android is under very active development, the changes were made there first. Changes to our other platforms were slower to come along but I believe they’ve already been made. Unfortunately the employee who was pushing this forward left the company and as a result the issue lost some momentum.